Dhaka Int'l Folk Fest undergoes lineup change

The Dhaka International Folk Festival 2017 has undergone some lineup changes, reportedly to comply with the daily runtime, organisers informed The Daily Star yesterday.

Bangladeshi artistes Arif Dewan, Shah Alam Sarkar and Aleya Begum are no longer part of the festival lineup, according to the updated information on the festival web site. Meanwhile, one new act has been added to the lineup, that of Mikael Hemniti Winther, the Danish Ambassador to Bangladesh who is an avid blues-rock guitarist.

The updated festival day-by-day lineup sent by the organisers are: Bauliana (Bangladesh), Fakir Shahabuddin (Bangladesh), Mauricio Tizumba and Sextet (Brazil), Tenzin Choegyal (Tibet) and Papon (India) on the first day, November 9; Baula (Bangladesh), Kutumba (Nepal), Mekaal Hasan Band (Pakistan), Shahjahan Munshi (Bangladesh) and Nooran Sisters (India) on the second day; and Shahnaz Beli (Bangladesh), Mikael Hemniti Winther (Denmark), Rastak (Iran), Basudeb Das Baul (India) and Tinariwen (Mali) on the concluding day.

The lineup of the festival, to be held at the capital's Army Stadium, was first announced at the press conference on October 29.

“The Army Stadium authorities have allowed us up to 1:30pm to finish the day's proceedings, and seeing our lineup, they suggested we cut down some artistes so we can accommodate all the artistes within the deadline,” Ruhul Amin, the press contact for the festival, told The Daily Star. 

Meanwhile, the online registration process to attend the festival has left a lot of people scratching their heads, judging by the Facebook event page of the festival. Like previous years, the festival is free of cost to attendees provided they complete the online registration from the festival's web site, dhakainternationalfolkfest.com. Registration for the festival opened on November 1 and is scheduled to go on till November 5. Registration has been opening daily from 12pm and is being closed after a certain number of registrations are done per day, as evident from the message on the web site “Registration is closed for today. It will open again at 12:00PM”. However, this correspondent failed in his attempt to register to the festival at 1pm on Thursday, and the Facebook event page shows many others who have not been able to register, trying as immediately as 12:08pm. There are also a number of complaints on social media that many of the registered attendees have not received their passes in the email, to which organisers have responded that all passes will be emailed eventually. When contacted by The Daily Star, organisers could not give a specific threshold of daily registrations before it is closed for the day.

The third edition of the Dhaka International Folk Festival, from November 9-11, is being presented by Meril and powered by Dhaka Bank. Sun Events is organising the event.